Lush Library discussion

Have you read it or are you reading it?
If so did you enjoy it/are you enjoying it? Would you read it again?

I've just gone and added my progress for American Gods and The Book Thief and I must say I thought I'd read more than I had. I've barely started it. I don't know if I'm just not getting into it, although I am enjoying it more than I did last time I tried to read it. I'll power on through and hopefully things will pick up.

I'm very much enjoying The Book Thief, the writing style is so beautiful and the characters so likeable. I have a feeling this book will haunt me for a long while after.

I'm just embarrassed and frustrated that I'm only halfway through ... these last few weeks my free hours have been taken up with a new course that I've started. I'm trying my hardest to squeeze in reading time though, just apologies for not getting started on American Gods yet. I do have my copy sat here waiting for me to start.

No worries Ness - thanks for the update. Discussions on all books will be left open - no threads will be closed. If you have time to add a bit to the discussions threads that would great - I know when I'd finished I found it difficult to remember where things happened or my thoughts and feelings at the time *hug*

Thanks Kirsty :) I'll add a bit more to the discussions as I go along. You're right, best to add present thoughts and feelings as they can get forgotten. Keep seeing wonderful bits of prose that I should add to the quotes ...

Well i have read it, it was ok at first, i plodded on through it all and to tbh, the ending was a let down, so on the whole i wish i had not bothered to read it.

I found this to be a very different read, being who the narrator is makes it very different and it felt (to me at least) rather true given where it took place and the age.
It's a lovely book and very thoughtful.

I read The Book Thief back in May and did enjoy it (though enjoy might be the wrong word). The thing that I disliked was the way in which Death told you everything that was going to happen ahead of time. It robbed the ending of a lot of its impact and I couldn't really understand why the author would do that.

It irritated me that death hinted at things too and I wondered if it was to soften the blow. TBT is categorized as being YA (I am surprised at that) so maybe the author's idea was to try not to shock too much while also attempting to keep young minds reading. What do you think?

I hadn't thought of that, but it would explain it very well.

I always thought it made sense for the author to have Death spoil things, because Death doesn't view the world in the same way as we do,time is nothing to him, the slight spoiler's were just a way(to me at least) to make it more obvious that Death doesn't have the same human emotions or skill or tact, because Death is something completely different, which I actually liked. For a moment when I started to read I thought of Terry Pratchett's version of Death.

I didn't find knowing what would happen lessened the impact for me, I was still sobbing at the end. I thought knowing that it would end tragically added to the poignancy of watching Liesel growing up and loving her new family and friends.

I didn't find the impact lessened either. It just felt like Death was retelling a story he had been through in his head loads of times rather than narrating the story as it happened.

I found Liesel's relationship with the mayors wife quite interesting. They both needed each other but at a distance

I absolutely loved this book! Such beautiful language ... and the characters were all so well-developed, I felt transported to a 3D Himmel Street. It doesn't matter how much I'd read about the war years before, no history book shook my emotions more than it did here.

It was also good to read a story told from the other side ... we don't often get that. Afterall the carpet bombing of German cities and large civillian massacre by the Allies has always been a bit of a taboo subject!

I was talking to a colleague about this book today (as she's just finished it too) and she asked whether I thought Liesel had ended up marrying Max. There's a line when she's dying when Death says:

"In her final visions, she saw her three children, her grandchildren, her husband, and the long list of lives that merged with hers. Among them, lit like lanterns were Hans and Rosa Hubermann, her brother and the boy whose hair remained the colour of lemons forever."

There's no mention of Max ... unless he is the husband? I'm not sure myself, I can only think of Max and Liesel as close, platonic freinds and I don't think Death would have omitted to tell us if they'd married. Can never be certain though. I wish a tiny bit more about their post-war lives had been included.

Just wondering now if my next book is going to be a disapointment compared to this one! Think everyone should read The Book Thief ... going to try and get my 15 year old to read it now.